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Latest Slur Against the Right: Replacement Theory
When I read the jumble of definitions that were supposed to define “replacement theory,” I became extremely skeptical of its credibility and validity. Yet a part of me, given the current chaotic climate in this country, was reluctant to discard it out of hand and assume it wasn’t important, for a number of reasons.
First, replacement theory is a mish-mash of theories that the Left has chosen to lump together, a kind of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. The problem with this “theory” is that the Left can conveniently modify it to suit their needs and use it to attack others. For example, one broad definition is:
At the extremes of American life, replacement theory — the notion that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to ‘replace’ and disempower white Americans — has become an engine of racist terror, helping inspire a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that erupted in violence.
Please note that the only people guilty of espousing this definition are “white Americans” at the extremes, and that Jews are conspiring with the elites.
But in the same article, these radical ideas are identified everywhere:
But replacement theory, once confined to the digital fever swamps of Reddit message boards and semi-obscure white nationalist sites, has gone mainstream. In sometimes more muted forms, the fear it crystallizes — of a future America in which white people are no longer the numerical majority — has become a potent force in conservative media and politics, where the theory has been borrowed and remixed to attract audiences, retweets and small-dollar donations.
In this definition, the conservative Right is conspiring with the white supremacists out of fear of losing their positions in society.
Finally, the Republican Party is targeted as espousing replacement theory:
Yet in recent months, versions of the same ideas, sanded down and shorn of explicitly anti-Black and antisemitic themes, have become commonplace in the Republican Party — spoken aloud at congressional hearings, echoed in Republican campaign advertisements, and increasingly embraced by right-wing candidates and media personalities.
Tucker Carlson on Fox has been targeted regarding replacement theory, even though he rejects the term; he does, however, point out that the Democrats have openly declared in the past that increasing the ranks of the Hispanic population will likely increase their electoral base, although evidence to the contrary is now emerging. I doubt that the Left appreciates being reminded of its arrogance.
And now Liz Cheney is “eating her own” (so to speak):
‘The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them,’ Cheney said in a tweet.
Although many Conservatives don’t take her seriously, the political Left probably agrees with her and uses her diatribes to discount us.
Do those of us on the political Right have reasons to be concerned? After years of being accused of being systemic racists, Nazis and anti-Semites, is replacement theory just another troll?
I believe that at some point we have to call out the Left for their smears, repeatedly, resolutely, and every time we are in front of a camera. We are looking at the worst possible attacks by a group that is incapable of recognizing its own bigotry, hatred and actions. After all, the Left, given how they condescend to the blacks in this country, demonstrate systemic racism. They demonstrate their willingness to make baseless accusations to prop up their narrative, such as Nazi attributions we heard from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likening the detention facilities to concentration camps. And her cohorts have made anti-Semitic remarks and were reprimanded with a pointless House response.
As an American, a Conservative, and a Jew I can no longer sit back and disregard these attacks as annoying but harmless. Separately, these diatribes might be brushed away, but cumulatively they are being used more frequently and with abandon. At some point, our half-hearted protests and complaining will strengthen their false narratives. And we will have lost any advantage and credibility to call them out.
What will we do then?
What can we do now?
Published in Culture
Just click here if you want to know what I’m talking about and still can’t figure it out.
I don’t see how that makes a difference. The problem is how you’re using the word “empiricism.” Empiricism was never limited to individual experience.
But the enlightenment sets you up to reject anything gained by the collective in favor of the individual. Generational experience is collective. The destruction of those traditional social values have been eroded because individual experience doesn’t always match the generational experience.
”Gay marriage isn’t going to hurt society. How can what two individuals affect everyone?”
vs
”Marriage is not just a covenant between a man and a woman, but a covenant with their community, as well.”
Ok, but why call that “empiricism”?
There is a very modern, “progressive” attitude that everything must be justifiable by recourse to empirical evidence and reason. That is, tradition is in itself worthless and should be treated with contempt. This foolish attitude ignores the fact that tradition is the accumulated wisdom of many generations–centuries and millennia of experience–whereby some ideas led to failure while other ideas led to success. The failures are long forgotten, and the successes are assumed by “rational” people to be the Natural Order of Things and therefore not in need of nurturing and defense.
Speaking of the urge to dispose of previous generations’ accumulated knowledge, do you remember Tom Wolfe’s essay The Great Relearning?
Yes. Tradition is empirical.
Maybe empiricism is more than what applies to evidence based science, statistical analysis and the philosophical belief that the senses are the ultimate source of human knowledge. Maybe it is, or includes, or fosters a culture of continuous skepticism, and questioning and testing of the beliefs and structures that have developed over time and which — though they work — according to empiricism, might have to be relearned and rejustified with each new generation. With this continual beginning from scratch, in which each individual is free — is required — to experiment for himself, society and the greater culture have to remain in a perpetual adolescence.
This is largely what I’m getting at, but I don’t think it is empiricism that does it. It was the enlightenment that demanded skepticism and retesting everything.
The bolded goes a long way in explaining so much.
In its narrowest definition, all our ideas come from the senses. Defined less narrowly, empiricism is merely the idea that we get knowledge from experience.
Yes, empiricism means we let future experience and individual experience have its say, but we begin by assuming that the wisdom of tradition is more or less correct.
Same thing scientists do with established theories.
And as has been pointed out previous/elsewhere, science would never get anywhere if every scientist felt the need to perform every experiment again, themselves.
That does take a level of trust and faith in what’s past, doesn’t it. And this trust can be the source of being misguided by others’ past mistakes and wrong conclusions.
Also, each individual must probe and prove reality at least a little bit.
Culturally, it seems to me, that high-information, complex, technological, and truly diverse cultures tend to make each new generation question more about what the culture asserts to be true and right and just. But as each individual grows and learns, cultures can in general eventually be seen by each generation to demonstrate efficacy in the promotion of goodness (peace, prosperity, freedom, cooperation, and justice) that individual world views cannot accomplish.
Thus accumulated wisdom, and the traditions which preserve it, can be appreciated and approved of afresh.
One guide to the correctness of previous experiments, without having to do them all again, is that further work done on the basis of previous experience, being successful. If the previous experiments were wrong, the most common future result would be the failure of work based on the earlier results.
Except in “soft sciences” where failure never seems to discourage them.
I was speaking mostly culturally. But even then history is full of completed experiments upon which modern cultures are derived.
I am currently willing to sell the Ricochet handle Lorem Ibsen for a reasonable price. Inquire within.
I take it that a reference to Buckley’s comment about the first thousand names in the phone book dovetails with the above discussion — that is, the justification of tradition as experimentally-supported theory?
Okay, I give up. What is Lorem Ibsen? I understand the the Buckley reference
“Lorem ipsum” are the first two “words” of nonsense text that are used as a placeholder by typesetters. The text stretches back to before the advent of electronic computers, but was picked up when word processing became a thing.
I would prefer to be replaced by my own descendants.